Updated September 2026.

I narrated my first audiobooks while I was still working a full-time teaching job. I'd teach all day and record at night, in a booth made of plastic pipe and packing blankets.

Audiobooks gave me a grounding that helped with everything I did after, and today our narrators have published over 750 audiobooks through Academy Voices. Plenty of audiobooks are non-fiction. Self-help, business, history, health, memoir. And non-fiction has its own challenges that fiction doesn't.

In fiction you've got characters and dialogue to carry you. In non-fiction it's usually just you and the author's ideas, sometimes for hours. The listener chose this book because they want to learn something, and your job is to make that easy for them.

So here are five big tips for narrating non-fiction audiobooks.

1. Read the book before you record it

Read the whole book before you start. Or at the very least skim it all the way to the end.

There's nothing worse than getting halfway through a book and realizing you missed the point the author was building towards. Or finding out in chapter nine that a name you've been saying for eight chapters is pronounced completely differently.

While you read, mark anything you'll need to look up. Names, places, technical terms, foreign words, acronyms. Non-fiction is full of them. Look them up before you hit record, and if you're not sure, ask the author. Most authors would much rather answer a pronunciation question than hear their name for their own method said wrong in the finished book.

2. Talk to the listener like you're explaining it to them

Think about the best teacher you ever had, or a really good talk you've watched online. They weren't reading at you. They were explaining something they cared about to somebody they wanted to understand it.

That's the sound you want. Conversational and clear. Not a lecture, and not a know-it-all.

The trap a lot of voice actors fall into with non-fiction is slowing way down to sound "serious" and then adding a bunch of pitch changes because it feels boring. It turns into a presentation. Slowing down is not bad advice, but it's only part of the advice. It still has to sound natural. Use pauses, and speed up and slow down the way you would if you were telling a friend about this book.

And don't hit every word. If you are emphasizing everything, you're not emphasizing anything. Pick the idea in each sentence that matters and let the rest support it.

A couple of non-fiction specifics. Chapter titles and headings usually get a simpler, more neutral read, so the listener hears that you've stepped out of the text for a moment and back in. Lists and numbered steps need to be really clear, because the listener can't see the page. And when the author makes a big point, you can lean into it a little with a bit more weight, without turning into a drill sergeant.

3. Record in sessions you can sustain

Audiobooks are long, and non-fiction can be dense. You need to pace yourself.

ACX works it out at about 9,300 words per finished hour. A finished hour is one hour of the final audiobook, the length a listener actually hears. So a 28,000-word non-fiction book is about three finished hours, and an 80,000-word book is around eight and a half.

And the finished hour is not the time it takes you. If you're new, it's probably going to take you six to eight hours of work per finished hour, because you're still finding your groove. That's recording, fixing mistakes, editing and checking the files.

So don't try to do it in one marathon. A lot of narrators record in sessions of about two hours with breaks, so their voice and their energy stay the same from chapter one to the last chapter. Stay hydrated. When your reads start to sound tired, stop for the day. A tired chapter is easy to hear and a pain to re-record.

4. Plan when you record

Your voice changes over the day. Most people sound lower and rougher first thing in the morning and brighter later on. Your mood shows up in your voice too. Tired, frustrated, just had an argument? The listener will hear it.

In a non-fiction book that matters, because the listener expects the same narrator all the way through. If chapter three was recorded at 7am and chapter four at 10pm after a long day, it can sound like two different people.

So pick a time of day that works for you and try to record at roughly the same time every session. Warm up first (a few tongue twisters and some of these voice acting exercises will do it), and listen back to the end of your last session before you start, so you match where you left off.

5. Know your audience

I saved the most important one for last. If you don't know who you're talking to, how are you going to reach them?

A book about raising toddlers and a guide for engineers are both non-fiction, and they need completely different reads. Think about who picks up this book, what they already know, and what they're hoping to get out of it.

Reading the book first tells you a lot. The author tells you the rest. Ask them who the book is for and how they want it to feel. That conversation will save you a lot of re-recording.

Getting your first non-fiction book

Non-fiction is a great place to start in audiobooks, and shorter books are an easier first step. Early in my career I took nearly everything, because I had no work. Later on, anything around three to five hours or less was something I was willing to take a risk on as a royalty share.

If you audition on ACX for a per-finished-hour book, get your audition in as soon as it shows up. Everybody wants those, so the earlier you get yours in, the better your chances of being heard. Keep the audition short, read the whole excerpt first and pick the strongest part. There's more on that in my post on how many auditions it takes to book a voice over job.

When it's time to deliver, your files have to meet ACX's technical requirements. I walk through that in how to format your audio files for ACX using Adobe Audition.

To practice, grab an excerpt from the audiobook section of our free scripts library. Read it, record it on your phone and listen back like you're the listener.

And if you want real books with your name on them, that's why we built Academy Voices. Every VO Journey Academy member gets free access. Our narrators have published over 750 audiobooks through it, the royalties are paid for 20 years, and there's a file checker that fixes your files for you when something's off.

Come narrate with us

We work on narration every week in our live classes. Angela Ohlfest, who has narrated over 250 audiobooks, runs Launch Pad on Thursday nights at 8pm ET, and Gabby Nistico teaches Acting on Mondays at 6pm ET.

You can sit in on all four of our classes for free during Free Class Week, Monday 12 to Thursday 15 October. Live on Zoom. No card, no call.

If you already know you want in, your first month of CORE is $39. You can join here.

Go read something out loud today.

Anthony